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NEW: iPower AA batteries. Li-poly rechargeable.


Derek H

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I saw that Location Sound Corp had these listed on their website. I called and they ended up telling me that they have to make a large order and haven't commited to it yet.

Does anyone know of another source for these yet? Maybe if we all call Location Sound Corp we can convince their sales manager to make the jump into this product.

 

Mark O.

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On June 5, 2016 at 6:26 AM, MartinTheMixer said:

Hmm, lithium polymer. Better not have a short in that transmitter, or things will get really exciting for whomever is wearing it at the time. 

I used ipower's 9volt lithium polymer batteries for 5 years without incident. more likely to short out a 9v than an "aa"

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37 minutes ago, MartinTheMixer said:

AO, What transmitter did you use them in?

I am a little curious how the multiple aa's will be balanced with each other. With one 9 volt, you have no differences in internal resistance, because you just have 1 battery. It just sounds like an odd setup. 

 

I used the 9volt ones in micron700 transmitters. when the "aa" ones arrive, I will try them in zaxcom transmitters. perhaps balance is less of an issue since they are regulated. time will tell. 

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Hello, I would be of the opinion that each battery would have different internal resistance. Therefore, if you are using 2, or more, as batteries wired in series, that they would discharge to the lowest acceptable level, at different rates or times. The easiest way to test this theory would be to fully charged 2 cells, put them in a transmitter until trans shuts off, then check the end voltage to see how far apart they are. You would want to check start voltage too, so you can tell you're starting at the same start voltage. If you check that, and the voltages are different, I think you have your answer to the issue of internal resistance, or maybe you have a bad charger.

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The nominal charged voltage of a LiPo cell is somewhere around 3.7v, therefore it is likely that the 9v version that we've all been using, contains more than one cell. 

Many people (those less inclined to rip stuff apart to learn the wizardry inside) don't know that a standard alkaline 9v. battery actually contains six AAAA (quad A) batteries in series.

 

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John, are you using the word nominal in its classic definition of "under actual value"? If so, ok, I guess I agree with that. But when you pull it off the charger, it is higher than that. What I mean is that you can use a lot of charge out of a cell before it is down to 3.7 volts.

Also, most applications, don't use multiple 9 volt cells in series, so there are rarely any issues there to deal with Balance of cells. I have a device that uses two 9 volts on parallel, not sure why the manufacturer did that, but they did. 

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The point with these batteries is, I believe, that they are regulated, so they will always show 1.5V no matter if they are fresh off the charger or just before depletion. So it's very difficult to measure anything with these.

In a device that requires two batteries, it will most likely simply stop working once one of the batteries has emptied. But that would be the same with any battery.

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11 hours ago, Constantin said:

The point with these batteries is, I believe, that they are regulated, so they will always show 1.5V no matter if they are fresh off the charger or just before depletion. So it's very difficult to measure anything with these.

In a device that requires two batteries, it will most likely simply stop working once one of the batteries has emptied. But that would be the same with any battery.

Constantin, What we were talking about had to do with the voltage of the battery, not what it was regulated to. I am guessing you are mentioning 2 batteries in a device because I had stated that I have a device that uses two 9 volt batteries?

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3 hours ago, Constantin said:

Yes, I am aware of that. I do wonder though, out of interest, how and where do you measure a battery which has regulated outputs?

Hello, Are you referring to measuring the stop and start voltage of the battery? 

Or are you referring to the amp hour capacity?

If these batteries are lipo's, I hope we know the fully charged voltage. If they are standard voltage lipo, meaning fully charged equals 4.3 volts and fully discharged equals 3.1 volts, that would seem to me these batteries are 1 cell, regulated to 1.5, designed to cut off power from the battery prior to damaging the cell. In most of the devices that we use, the device, let's say a transmitter, cuts ITSELF off, prior to damaging the cell, because it simply won't run on the reduced voltage. I am basing this 1.5 voltage of these cells, from an earlier post here on this site. And someone may have mentioned this, but if the battery stays at 1.5v until it is discharged, then our cute little battery indicators are going to always show the battery in our transmitter is fully charged until it fails to transmit. 

The one thing to be happy about here is that the transmitters will pull less current to run. This may equal less heat from the transmitter.

I think the bigger issue here is, why use these?

What are we gaining? I am guessing I have longer experience with lipo batteries than 95 percent of the members of this site. Lipo's are an odd choice for a AA battery.

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6 hours ago, MartinTheMixer said:

Hello, Are you referring to measuring the stop and start voltage of the battery? 

Or are you referring to the amp hour capacity?

Voltage. 

6 hours ago, MartinTheMixer said:

 And someone may have mentioned this, but if the battery stays at 1.5v until it is discharged, then our cute little battery indicators are going to always show the battery in our transmitter is fully charged until it fails to transmit. 

Yes exactly! That's what I was musing about in post #7 of this thread, and that is exactly why I was asking you a few posts ago how you wanted to measure the voltage of these batteries. 

By the way, when I say regulated power supply, I believe now that I mean switching power supply. At least that's what Larry Fisher calls it earlier

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On Friday, June 10, 2016 at 1:59 PM, ao said:

I used the 9volt ones in micron700 transmitters. when the "aa" ones arrive, I will try them in zaxcom transmitters. perhaps balance is less of an issue since they are regulated. time will tell. 

Hello, whether they are regulated or not, I don't know how they will get around the following. Batteries have different internal resistance as they are manufactured. So, if your device has 6 batteries, that would equal 6 different internal resistance figures.

I don't think anyone has told me yet, what it is we are gaining by risking putting these little mini flamethrowers in our equipment. 

Does anyone know?

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I don't see any advantage over a NiMh Eneloop. These LiPo's and Eneloops both have low self discharge rates, both have flat discharge curves until they are nearly dead, both have very similar power capacities in mW-hours (the more important measure), both can be recharged hundreds of times and both are more expensive than alkalines. The LiPo's have a higher voltage but modern transmitters have switching supplies that are very tolerant of both low and high voltages (unless there is a design fault, ahem). A cheap transmitter might work better with the LiPo's because of the regulation. Eneloops are certainly more available and there are many more chargers for them.

Best, LarryF

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2 hours ago, LarryF said:

I don't see any advantage over a NiMh Eneloop. These LiPo's and Eneloops both have low self discharge rates, both have flat discharge curves until they are nearly dead, both have very similar power capacities in mW-hours (the more important measure), both can be recharged hundreds of times and both are more expensive than alkalines. The LiPo's have a higher voltage but modern transmitters have switching supplies that are very tolerant of both low and high voltages (unless there is a design fault, ahem). A cheap transmitter might work better with the LiPo's because of the regulation. Eneloops are certainly more available and there are many more chargers for them.

Best, LarryF

Hello, Yes to everything Larry just said. Now that Larry and I agree on all that, is there someone, somewhere, that can give just one reason to use these? Anything, like, "well, the Istanbulians believe Nimh chemistry is the devil, and I have a job there next week.". I will entertain any reasoning. Any. 

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1 hour ago, Freeheel said:

If they don't cost too much more and have a similar runtime as a NiMh battery, but weigh ½ as much- I'd go for them.

Cheers,

Brent Calkin

Hello, let's say they weigh half as much, as a AA Nimh, then that is 1/2 -ounce each. If your mixer takes 6 batteries, that's only a 3 ounce savings. If your transmitter takes 2 batteries, that's only 1 ounce difference. How important can that be? 

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